Let's Rumble

Pick an all-time great sporting event that you would have liked to have seen in person.

The “Rumble in the Jungle” probably would be high on a lot of lists. Longtime tennis announcer and sportswriter Bud Collins wouldn’t have to put the 1974 heavyweight fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali on his list. He was there.

And he has the pants to prove it.

Included in Collins’ arsenal of unique pants that Charlie Davidson, owner of The Andover Shop, has made for Collins, is a pair depicting each of the legendary fighters.

“We try to get material from the various places that we go,” Collins said last week while he was in Newport shooting some material for the Tennis Channel. “I had covered the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’ and they had material on sale in Kinshasa (Zaire) with pictures of Ali and pictures of Foreman.

“So I took the cloth to Charlie and said, ‘Can you deal with this, so we can get one head (on one leg) and one head (on the other)?’ He said, ‘Sure, we can.’”

But it took a while for Davidson to finish the pants.

“He got tied up with something and forgot all about it,” Collins said. “I was doing the tournament here on television — it must have been about 1980 — and all of a sudden, I see Charlie running up the stairs.

“We’re on the air, and he says, ‘I’ve got the pants! I’ve got the pants!’ I said, ‘What is he talking about?’ I’d forgotten about them, too.”

Apparently, they were worth interrupting a TV broadcast.

“He had these beautiful pants,” Collins said. “I tried to tell the stage manager, ‘Tell him we’re on the air!’”

“I do wear those once in a while.”

How could you not wear them? A lot of people can say they saw the fight, but probably only one can do so wearing a pair of pants he had made to commemorate the event.